Medieval Sex

Warning: this episode contains explicit language. Medieval people weren’t prudish—far from it. Dan is joined by medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega to explore sex, marriage, and desire in the Middle Ages. They delve into the beliefs around sodomy as “non-procreative sex”; pilgrimages as raucous release valves, raunchy art and love spells. They'll look at sex habits among the different classes, queer lives in monasteries, widows’ freedoms, abortion, STIs, and the risks of childbirth, and what purgatory had in store for the lustful. Along the way, they bust myths from chastity belts to teenage brides. A funny, frank, evidence-packed tour of how people got down—then worried about their souls. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Matthew Wilson and Dougal Patmore. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 01

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• 1:24Dan Snow?

  Hey folks, just a quick heads up before you jump in. There is some pretty explicit language in this episode, so you may want to rethink listening to it with your kids.

• 1:36Dan Snow?

  Hi everybody, welcome to the show. We're talking medieval sex, courtly love, chivalric, damsels in distress, chaste belts. Well, that's the myth. What's the reality? Well, you'll be shocked to learn that most of what we think happened in medieval period was in fact invented by those uptight, pesky Victorians. Medieval folk were rampant. They were having sex in public, in churches, can you imagine? Pilgrimages. There was a sort of unwritten rule of what goes on tour, stays on tour. Medieval people, and this shouldn't come as a huge surprise, were having a lot of sex, as you would. There was also not a lot of other entertainment. They were doing it in all sorts of ways that you would not believe. Now, to dispel the myths and tell us exactly

• 2:21Dan Snow?

  how medieval people were getting down to it, this is important stuff, I'm joined by the one and only Dr. Elna Janniger, host of History Hits' Very Own Gone Medieval Podcast and card-carrying internet phenomenon.

• 2:38Dan Snow?

  Elna, thanks for coming on the show.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Dan, it's always a pleasure.

• 2:41Dan Snow?

  People are thinking church, they're thinking finger wagging, they're not allowed to have sex. What's going on with the church in this period?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Okay, like, there is a little bit of finger wagging. Like, I'm gonna be real with you. But fundamentally, they are working a kind of moral tightrope with sex. Because, yeah, okay, in their opinion, the ideal Christian isn't going to have sex, right? In ideal world, you dedicate yourself to God and you are chaste. Saint Augustine is really big on this. Saint Jerome writes about this. But, one of the things that they also say is that, well, you know, God says, "Go forth, multiply", and you have to do that through sex, right? So sex has to exist. And so the answer for that is obviously marriage. You get married, it's a holy sacrament, and then you can have sex, and then you can do all that procreating that needs to happen. And so Saint Jerome says about this, "I love marriage because it gives me virgins", right? And so it's like a roll of the dice. Maybe

• 3:32Speaker 02

  your kids will dedicate themselves to God, and then they won't have sex. So, yeah, ideal world, you wouldn't have sex, but everybody knows that it's going to happen. So there's got to be a legal workaround for that. That's marriage.

• 3:45Dan Snow?

  A legal workaround?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:46Dan Snow?

  And are you allowed... So you're not allowed to have sex outside marriage?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:51Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Of course, the church is going to say, "You're not allowed to have sex outside of marriage", but like, why is there... There's some sex cops? They're under your bed, they're gonna jump out. I mean, they're in the field, that's where a lot of people are having sex? No. Like, they're not out behind the tavern. And in practice, what ends up happening is if you go to church and you say, you know, "Bless me, Father, I have sinned. I was shagging the bar wench", they're gonna be like, "Yeah, that's bad. Please don't do that again", and you do get penance for that. But also, if you then marry her, it's kind of okay.

• 4:22Dan Snow?

  Yeah, please donate and repent.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 4:25Dan Snow?

  Okay, so, once you're in marriage, are you allowed to enjoy sex? And is sex for procreation? Or are you allowed to, like, fill your boots?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, it's really, uh, you are not allowed to enjoy sex. I mean, to the point where Thomas Aquinas writes about this. And he says that while you're having sex, you should be avoiding lascivious kisses, right? So the idea here is, they understand, to an extent, that orgasm is necessary for procreation. So, the working idea of women's reproductive systems is the same as it was in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, which is what we call the two-seed theory. So, there's an idea that women have semen like men do. And so, if men expel semen during orgasm, then so do women, but it happens internally.

• 5:06Dan Snow?

  But it has to be during orgasm?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:08Dan Snow?

  Well, hang on, we're getting somewhere here.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 5:10Dan Snow?

  This is pretty progressive.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So, everybody needs to be orgasming during sex.

• 5:14Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  In order for procreation to take place. But you're not supposed to take it too far. It's supposed to be like, please just-

• 5:22Dan Snow?

  You're walking a tightrope here.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  It's where you really are. It's like, do not get naked, that's one of the rules.

• 5:26Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  It shouldn't be during daylight.

• 5:29Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. It should be in night, ideally. You should do it as quickly as possible. It's sort of like, get in, get out, ninja.

• 5:36Dan Snow?

  Don't threaten me with a good time.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Just like, just straight in there, right? And then there's all these other, like, knock-on rules, right? So technically, you're not supposed to have sex on a Sunday, obvious reasons. You're not supposed to have sex on a Wednesday, uh, because, uh, Wednesday is the day that you're supposed to go to confession. Same thing for Friday. You're not supposed to have sex on Saturday, because the idea of sex is that, sex is so sexy, that you're gonna get really turned on from the fact that you had sex. And then, so, on Sunday, when you're meant to be in church, thinking about the Lord, you'll just be sitting there being turned on instead.

• 6:08Dan Snow?

  So you need to have a fade in and a fade out?

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:10Dan Snow?

  Okay, so no Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, the weekend's out.

• 6:13Dan Snow?

  Wednesday.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  And no Wednesday. So that, you got three days. But also, there are all these knock on things where it's like, well, definitely no sex during Lent.

• 6:21Dan Snow?

  Lent, of course.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  That's pretty obvious. I know sex during Advent, because you're supposed to be thinking about the end of the world during Advent.

• 6:27Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  So there's all these rules that the church puts out there, but also, we know that nobody's following them, because if people really were following them, then there would be no one born in September. Right? Like, you just would be like, oh, no, well, that was Advent. It's out, right? So it's fine that they put all these rules out there, but what happens in practice is, you know, I'm allowed to say this because I did 16 years of Catholic school. I don't know if you've met Catholics, but

• 6:50Dan Snow?

  I've come across them.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  They are having sex outside of wedlock. I'm sorry, please don't send the papacy on me. It's not my fault that this is happening, but it's true.

• 6:59Dan Snow?

  Okay, so that hasn't changed as dramatically you might think. The female orgasm thing's very interesting, right?

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:05Dan Snow?

  So that implies that women, because there's, there's ideas from other periods and cultures that sort of women shouldn't have any sexual urges at all.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's kind of the opposite here. And one of the overlying features of, well, actually, European pre-modern ideas about women, I mean, this holds true up until about the 19th century, is if we're talking about gender and sexuality, everyone is like, oh, women, they love it.

• 7:29Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Women are just like out for it. Women, you cannot stop them. They're horny as all get out.

• 7:34Dan Snow?

  They're the problem.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  They just want to have lots and lots of sex, right? So Boccaccio has got a quote about this in the Decameron, and he says that "one rooster is able to service ten hens, but ten men would scarcely be able to service one woman."

• 7:48Dan Snow?

  Interesting.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  So women are just, you know, sex crazed, they're out for it, and they derive a lot of pleasure during sex. And now, they need to in order to conceive, absolutely. But everyone's kind of confused about why it is that women like sex so much. Much is written about the fact that women are still interested in having sex even when they're menstruating. And they're like, well, that is proof that they're just wildly horny, because, you know, horses don't do that, things of this nature. And there is a lot of talking about in humoral theory terms why women are particularly interested in sex. And that's because women are cold and wet, and men are hot and dry. And so women are sort of like lizards.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  So women really want to be heated up, and sex heats them up for two reasons. One, just through fricative properties. It's like, they'll talk about kind of rubbing sticks together.

• 8:37Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  That's a bit of a thing.

• 8:38Dan Snow?

  It gets warm, yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And the other thing is Men's semen, because like a men's semen is the most masculine, manly man thing that there could possibly be.

• 8:46Dan Snow?

  Sure.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  It's hot and dry, so then-

• 8:48Dan Snow?

  So it warms them up?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  So it warms them up.

• 8:50Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  And so then it's also said that women derive pleasure twice during sex. They derive pleasure from the men's ejaculation and also their own, which is happening internally. So they're like, so you can understand why women are completely insatiable and attempting to have sex at all times constantly. So the way the medieval people relate to sexuality is that you've just sort of got to keep an eye on women because you never know what they'll be up to, which is presumably attempting to shag around.

• 9:17Dan Snow?

  We should, at this point, raise the issue of the chastity belt, though.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 9:20Dan Snow?

  Is that sounds like, is that something they might have turned to? If they're always worried about women shagging everyone? No?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  No, I'm afraid that this is, uh, this is a Victorian, uh, invention.

• 9:30Dan Snow?

  Fever dream.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Oh, they love it, don't they? They're slaggy as all get out, you know, Victorians, you know, you heard it here first. And I'll wrestle any Victorianist who says otherwise. But this is one of those things that they make up. A lot of times, if you've heard of some particularly gruesome form of medieval torture, whether it is something like the Iron Maiden, or indeed the chastity belt, a Victorian made that up.

• 9:54Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  So they just love to think about the medieval period as this particularly torturous time. And also, I think that they think chastity belts are sexy. So, uh, yeah, unfortunately, uh, for Victorians, no, that's not real, but it's kind of fun to think about how Victorians are weird, I think.

• 10:09Dan Snow?

  Uh, we, we, we can all agree on that. Is there a class issue here? I was reading the other day, Stefan Zweig talking about Austrian society of the 19th century, and he goes, "My sisters, the women I knew, we weren't having sex before marriage. We were really messed up around sex. And we'd take these journeys through the countryside and we'd see like happy peasants, clearly shagging away outside wedlock, and some would get married and happy." And they would think, "Hang on, what's going on here?" The kind of educated elite of this Austrian empire were really tormented and tortured about sex, but living cheek by jowl, people that were just clearly having sex and just seemed reasonably happy. It's not happier.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  And this is absolutely the case for the medieval period generally. Like, we're talking about, of the European population, about 70% of them are peasants, right? And you can tell a peasant anything you want, there's all these highfalutin ideas, but they're just getting out there and living their lives, right? When we think about marriage in the medieval period, a lot of the time what we're talking about is actually wealthy people, you know, it's kings, it's princes, it's this point 000001% of society.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Medieval peasants are shagging around. They are kind of having sex whenever. They're getting married at the kind of normal ages, usually in your early twenties for both men and women. There's none of this, people say, oh, well, people get married at 14 years old in the medieval period. No, they don't. You get married at 14 if you are a princess, and then even then, you're not like allowed to shag your husband until you're 16 or so. Quite famously, Eleanor of Castile and King Edward got married as teenagers and were shagging at 14, and it got separated because Eleanor got knocked up, and they were like, no, no, no, no, no, you're gonna kill her. And so they got sent to different countries because they were like, please don't do that. So, you know, there is this kind of understanding that that might be dangerous.

• 11:49Dan Snow?

  That was a love match.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a love match, and it's so sweet, but, I mean, uh, look, yeah, I mean, please do not put on the internet that I was shagging underage sex, but, you know, it is one of these things where peasants are kind of doing this handful of things. And then there is a much more sort of torture thing that's going on in upper-class society, which then becomes the literature trope known as courtly love. We talk about Eleanor and Edward because it's like, oh, gosh, wow, a love match. Because most of these people hate each other. They're like, well, look, we shag because, you know, I'm gonna lie back and think of England, so that's what's going to happen here. But most people then are going to want to seek some other kind of sexual outlet, and the way that they do that is through this trope of courtly love, which is kind of like, you know, you sit around,

• 12:34Speaker 02

  you, I, the other rich people who are around, and

• 12:38Dan Snow?

  And you're all in arranged marriages.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  You're all in arranged marriages.

• 12:40Dan Snow?

  So it's all brutal.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  And, you know, everyone kind of understands it's happening. You write each other love poetry. A lot of it takes place pretty from afar, where you sit around and pine.

• 12:49Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And they love to pine, you know, and it's very romantic, and you, oh, and I've gone off my food, and I can't, and then when someone is out of town, then you sneak off and you shag each other really quickly. So they are absolutely having sex outside of wedlock rather a lot. Kings are just gonna shag whoever they want, that's fine. Queens, probably not so much. It's just, there's

• 13:09Dan Snow?

  God, those royal bloodlines are important, right?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  It's too much at stake, really, but, I mean, duchesses... Marquess is sure, go for it. Like, you know, help yourself.

• 13:18Dan Snow?

  And if you're married to Edward II, you get a pass.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, you can do anything that you want, babe, as long as you can stand it. That's all I'm saying, you know?

• 13:26Dan Snow?

  And of course, they're the people that have left the biggest imprint in the archives and the history books, the literature of the time. So that can skew our, our understanding of this period.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And it is quite interesting because I think now, again, let's talk some trash about the Victorians lightly. You know, I think if you say the word courtly love out loud to people, they will think that this means, oh, like romance. And then like eventually marrying someone. And that's not true at all. This is an express way of having extramarital sex and making it really beautiful, right? So peasants don't need all that because they're just gonna do what they're gonna do, right? And also peasants are gonna get married for love. So it just sort of doesn't apply to them in the same way.

• 14:02Dan Snow?

  Interesting. Let's talk about how people had sex. You mentioned peasants. I mean, the domestic spaces are different, right? You're living with families. How does this work? Is there an accepted time and place? Is there like date night? What goes on?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things that happens rather a lot is having sex not in the house.

• 14:20Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  There's a lot of shagging in fields.

• 14:22Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Just like absolutely tons of it, because you can sort of be guaranteed some privacy. We know that there are also particular places, kind of like dogging now, where there'll be like woods and stuff that people go. So for example, in Bristol, they had a bunch of woods that was called fucking woods. Because they don't care. They're not here to play, right? They're like, yeah, that's the woods that you fuck in.

• 14:45Dan Snow?

  Yeah, that's gonna be ambiguous.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then so, and that would be the sort of thing. You go out of your house and then you do that there. Now, there are rules to this sort of stuff as well. They're like, I mean, please try to have some kind of model. Like go real far into the field. Don't do it right next to the road. Go into the woods. And then there's rules about things like, please don't go inside churches and have sex there. And there are all these apocryphal stories about so and so couples snuck off to have sex in the church. Because when services aren't on, it's empty and it's dry.

• 15:11Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  And they get stuck together. And then their punishment is they kind of have to go on a... Pilgrimage and all the townspeople are like, you were shagging in the church while they're paraded around naked in front of them. It's one of these classic medieval stories about how everyone likes to make fun of people who are shagging.

• 15:28Dan Snow?

  So you get the sense that's probably something that's going on. People are sneaking into the church.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so these are the things with learning about sex in the medieval period, you have to look at a lot of really hostile witnesses because most of what's going to come to us is going to come from legal documents or church documents. And they are being like, please stop doing this. And then you're like, oh, okay. So that's what was going on. Fantastic. Right?

• 15:49Dan Snow?

  What about pilgrimage? I think you and I have talked before and you talked about the study of what happens on the road stays on the road.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Oh, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads. You know, it's like a rugby tour. It's like a hen's night. It is a fantastic time to do some shagging because you're under plenari indulgence. So that means basically you don't sin while you're on pilgrimage.

• 16:10Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you're, well, you're, bro, you're on pilgrimage. Yeah, you're all like, go for it. Do whatever you want.

• 16:15Dan Snow?

  Oh, really?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  God loves that stuff, in fact.

• 16:17Dan Snow?

  Break some skulls.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:19Dan Snow?

  Have sex. Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's gonna be beautiful, right? And so we know especially in the later medieval period in the Lowlands, so kind of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, there is the equivalent of, you know how like hen's nights, they'll be going around like wearing a little penis hat and things like that. There are these pilgrims badges that they would wear at the time that are completely obscene. So my personal favorite is a vulva that's wearing a little crown that is being cared on a litter by three penises that have legs.

• 16:44Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Great stuff.

• 16:46Dan Snow?

  And the church is like, look at those saintly relics.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Exactly. And they survived us in the hundreds. Like, there are so many of these things and they're really cheap. They're made out of pewter. It's the sort of thing that you can buy. And hilariously, originally, some people would be like, well, maybe they're fertility charms. And I'm like, girl, please be honest with yourself. So one of the things that is really interesting about that for us is that we can see there that the church is turning a blind eye to a lot of stuff because pilgrimage is just great for them, right? Because you're gonna, you're going to end up at whatever that site is and you're going to pray and you're going to give them a donation. You're gonna buy the biggest candle that there is. And that is going to be something that's assured because they are gonna feel a little guilty about all the shagging. And then they can go, hey, it's fine. You're doing great, girl. And it will also mean that people will want to go on further pilgrimages because they

• 17:35Speaker 02

  had so much fun, right?

• 17:36Dan Snow?

  Wow. What a, like a legion of religiosity and recreation and sexual freedom, that's a ride, isn't it? You can, so people can leave home, see the world, experience something, but they're on God's time, there's a sort of holy purpose. It's a bit like kids going on their gap year's day and doing a little orphanage work, but whilst having some coming of age experiences.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Exactly. It is really, really similar. And, and we see people also kind of decry this. Marjorie Kemp, one of my personal enemies, I think she's the worst.

• 18:05Dan Snow?

  And who is she?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  So she is a late medieval woman from Norfolk. So she hails from what is then Bishop's Lynn, but is now King's Lynn. She is a very successful businesswoman, but she wants to be a saint. So she commissions in autobiography about her own life. And the main miracle that she does is like go around crying and annoying people. And she's like, because I'm just so overcome by how much I love Jesus. And she has this whole weird lie about how when she's on pilgrimage, her fellow pilgrims kick her off pilgrimage because she wants to pray at every meal. And they're like, we want to have sex. Get out of here, lady. And so it's like, obviously this is an overstatement, right? There probably are plenty of people who are on pilgrimage for the right reasons, but there are a lot of pilgrims who are on there for, I'm not going to call them the wrong

• 18:50Speaker 02

  reasons, I'm going to call them, they have a different motive.

• 18:53Dan Snow?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  That's all.

• 18:55Dan Snow?

  Interesting. What about different forms of attraction and sex? What about homosexuality?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is a really interesting one, because in the medieval period, they don't have a concept of homosexuality, because they don't have a concept of identity in the way that we do. They wouldn't say that anyone has a sexuality. What they've got is action. So you either are what they call a sodomite, or you are not. Now, the category of sodomite is incredibly broad, because sodomy technically means any type of sex that you can't get pregnant from.

• 19:22Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  So if you've got two cis dudes who are having sex, that's definitely sodomy, because nobody's getting knocked up.

• 19:28Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Right? That's just not going to happen. Same thing with two women, right? But technically, you're a sodomite if you are a married woman and you go down on your husband. Because no one's getting pregnant there. So that is sodomy, still. Now, we tend to use sodomy to mean one thing in particular and specifically to be talking about gay men. But at that time, they're just like a non-procreative sex haver, right? So sodomy is bad. And sodomy is bad according to Thomas Aquinas because it's illogical, right? If the only logical reason to have sex is to have children, then when you're doing sodomy, you can't be doing it. And so it's illogical and that means it's out of alignment with God. Right? Does that stop people from doing it? Absolutely not.

• 20:11Dan Snow?

  You'll be shocked to learn.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  You, can you believe?

• 20:13Dan Snow?

  I mean, Thomas Aquinas, he has a lot to answer for.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Ooh, this guy. I mean, and he's thinking about it all the time, too. I mean, my man is out here thinking about onanism, which is what we would call masturbation. He's out here thinking about whether or not it's sinful if monks have wet dreams. It's not, just so you know. I know you're worried. It's not. But the thing is that we know a lot about what we would call gay sex, specifically from monks, because monks and nuns are having a lot of it. And they write. They're all literate. That's the thing about being a monk and a nun. Your job is to write things down. And we've got pretty hot love letters back and forth from people to each other. You know, nuns will get moved to different monasteries and then they pine. And they're like, I miss all the hot sex we used to have.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  And every few years, there'll be a crackdown in varying monastic orders where they're like, I swear to God, stop shagging each other. There's this really great ordinance for a nunnery where they're like, "You are not allowed to call other nuns my little bird. Get out." And like, "You can't sleep in each other's beds. No. And you have to be wearing clothes." And you know, we see this over and over again happening. And so this tends to be one of these things where we don't know. Like, is this kind of a, well, you're just in a monastery or a nunnery and you don't see the outside world and you're like, Annie's port in a storm, baby? Or do you end up in a monastery or a nunnery because you're like, you know, "I'd really just love to spend all my time with members of the same sex." We don't have a way of knowing, but we do know that a lot of them absolutely are getting it on.

• 21:43Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

• 21:53Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialised. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 22:34Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero 50 times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalised, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own, so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves.

• 23:18Dan Snow?

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• 23:47Speaker 01

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• 24:29Speaker 01

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• 24:37Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Suzanne Ellipsum, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty. From Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:16Dan Snow?

  And speaking of writing things now, I'm thinking now about the illustrations on manuscripts and the art in the board and things. Some of that gets quite raunchy, and that's being done by these monks and sometimes, right?

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:26Dan Snow?

  So how is that squared with like phalluses and things like that? What's that doing there?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so one of the really big art motifs that you will see all the time, and there's some really famous images of it. In the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, they have this really beautiful Roman de la Rose, which is, it's a smut story, it's courtly love, it's great. But in the margins, they have these images of nuns picking phalluses off a tree. And the phallus tree is a couple of things. This is one where we do think that People kind of put it up as a way of saying, oh, you know, fertility isn't that great. But it's also a joke about how much women just love that D. And they would harvest it if they could. They're trying to bring in those crops.

• 26:06Dan Snow?

  Sweet, sweet fruit.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Uh huh, absolutely. And you see these nuns just picking these huge dicks out of a tree. And then-

• 26:11Dan Snow?

  I suspect that's drawn by men.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we don't know.

• 26:15Dan Snow?

  Well, we don't know.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Could have been.

• 26:15Dan Snow?

  Could have been.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Could have been.

• 26:16Dan Snow?

  Who knows?

• 26:17Speaker 02

  And then, you know, eventually one of the nuns goes on to shag a monk. And then she's leading him around by a little leash around his penis. It's great. And so these are things that are certainly happening. And look, the Roman de la Rose, it's great, but it is, you know, courtly love literature. It is romance literature like anything else now. And so you can have an audience who's going to be like, oh, I would like a very richly illustrated version of that, please. But it's not exactly, you know, as though they're like, please draw some dicks in the margins of Moby Dick, right? Like, that's not the same thing. So it is kind of like a fun text. And yes, it is literature for us now, but, I mean, it's a book about shagging. I'm going to be so real with you.

• 26:55Dan Snow?

  And so if it's a book about shagging, you're allowed to have those kind of illustrations in the margin. Interesting. So that does imply readers who are relaxed about that more than are Victorian forbears.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. A hundred percent, I would say that medieval people are more relaxed about sex than Victorians are in any case, yeah.

• 27:14Dan Snow?

  We might, I guess, talk about the science of reproduction. You've talked about the ejaculation, menstrual cycles, pregnancy, was there quite understanding of how the mechanics works?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're pretty good on the mechanics, although, you know, obviously, they are not clear yet on the fact that women have eggs, which you need microscopes for that. So it's going to take a really long time. But they're, they're pretty clear on what is going on inside people's bodies. You know, contrary to popular opinion, medieval people could dissect cadavers. It's not done very often. There is a worry about contagion. They're worried that if you cut someone open, then miasma is going to come out and they'll kill everyone. But there are laws on the books, for example, in the Holy Roman Empire, that all physicians need to be trained on cadavers every once in a while, right? So they know what's going on in there, and they've got lots of illustrated diagrams of this. And with this, there are some interesting ideas, particularly around menstruation. So the idea, again, comes down to humoral theory.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  So when you're born as a baby, the idea is across the board, that's the hottest you're ever going to be, right? So you're born very, very, very hot. And quite wet also. And so age is seen as a process of getting drier and colder over time.

• 28:22Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Until when you die of old age, it's essentially you become so cold and dry that like that's it, right?

• 28:27Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  So the idea here is that when little girls are younger, they're quite hot. So they're able to burn off any excess humors that would be malign. But because they've become colder, when they're older, they lose that ability. And menses is there for your bad humors that you couldn't burn off. So you're just going to have to expel them. And then that can be put a stop to by getting people pregnant. And also, it's kind of like, oh, well, that's just sort of a fluvia, right? They know that you can't get pregnant while you're menstruating. I mean, you can kind of, but it's very difficult.

• 28:58Dan Snow?

  But basic idea of cycles.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they get that. And their idea of menopause is that, well, now you've become so cold that you can't even expel menses.

• 29:08Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  And so then there's this concern, there's a little bit of concern about older women, that they might be poisonous because they have like backed up menses. And there's like a lot written about like, don't meet the eyes of older women because they're kind of like basilisks and they can kill you. So it's not great, you know? Yeah, they have pretty chilled out ideas about sex, but I'm not here to tell you this is some kind of like enlightened time where they're like, women are great. But they do kind of want to see women pregnant because there is also the idea that wombs are kind of like little animals. Now, this is going back to Galen, this is going back to Aristotle and Plato, any Greek physician would tell you this. And that the best way to make sure that women don't end up hysterical is to keep them pregnant.

• 29:44Dan Snow?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Because pregnancy pins your uterus in one specific place and it keeps it from going onto your liver or onto your brain and making you all crazy. All right, so.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 29:57Dan Snow?

  Any aphrodisiacs, speaking of the science of these things?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. So if you look in any herbarium, which these are great, these are some of my favorite, favorite medieval books, herbariums, where they have these lush illustrations of plants and flowers. And they will say, okay, well, here's some ways that you can use these as aphrodisiacs. And aphrodisiacs are kind of like the number one thing that most plants are for. And there is rather a lot of kind of like seeing any flower that is particularly sweet as an aphrodisiac. So a rose is an aphrodisiac and a violet is an aphrodisiac. There are also love spells. And interestingly, medieval people are a little bit more chilled out about the idea of magic than early modern people are, where they freak out and they see witches everywhere. But there's a lot of talking about love spells in penitentiials, which are like guidebooks for priests.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  So this is what you should ask during confession. And they'll be like, girl, are you baking bread and rubbing it down your naked body to feed to a guy to make him fall in love with you? That's very naughty.

• 30:55Dan Snow?

  Important question.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Don't do that. There's also, oh, I've got a bad love spell. According to Bouchard de Vermees, who's writing to us in the early medieval period, so eighth century, women are taking live fishes and inserting them into their vaginas and then feeding them to men in order to make them love them. And now, Dan, I'm going to wager that isn't happening.

• 31:22Dan Snow?

  A, it isn't happening, and B, it wouldn't work.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  I just, I mean, like, what, what is going on with this? It's just, it's very much, you know, so again, with hostile witnesses and with Victorians, right? You will get these things and it's like, where did that come from? And it's just some monk who's never had sex being like, I bet they're taking that fish. And you're like, okay, bro. Yeah, maybe like, wow, calm down slightly. I just, woof. So there are all these things that in theory you can do, but also the church kind of says one of the reasons you shouldn't be doing it is it doesn't work. And you're kind of fooling yourself and you need to like grow up. God wouldn't let that happen.

• 31:56Dan Snow?

  So it's more enlightened in some ways in terms of the act of sex, in terms of women's enjoyment of sex, some of the availability of sex. How do we then just quickly talk about the sexual politics of women, property, power? You know, is that kind of divorced or is this connected with how medieval people are having sex? Like, are women allowed to have agency over their lives and their decisions?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  So this is where things can get kind of weird because, you know, when we hear, oh, women should orgasm during sex in order for them to get pregnant, this has a kind of corollary that's a real downer. So for example, in cases of rape, if a woman then ends up pregnant as a result of it, everyone goes, oh.

• 32:36Dan Snow?

  So she really enjoyed it.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, she actually enjoyed it. Actually, she wanted it, right? There's also the case of with raptus, which is a difficult one to work out. The Latin term is raptus, and we don't necessarily know what that means at any given time. It could be thinking about what we think of as like coercive sex or violent sex. And it could be you ran off with your boyfriend and were making out. And you didn't have your father's permission, right? Because women are very much the property of the men in their lives. And so when raptus occurs, it is envisioned much less as an offence against the woman and much more as an offence against whatever man owns her. So, for example, in cases of raptus, a lot of the time the punishment is the man needs to marry the woman.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  And now that's kind of fine if you were off shagging your boyfriend against your dad's will, that's great and you're like, success, outcome achieved. But if this is something violent, then that's really kind of a horrible thing that happens. And we also see kind of more on the bright side of this, a lot of worry about women who are widows. So, for example, if you are really wealthy, say your husband had been a member of a guild, you're also in the guild now, usually because you can do the same work. Your husband dies, then that usually means the guild membership transfers on to you. You've got a bunch of money, you're not worried about whatever. These women start shagging around rather a lot and everyone's like, oh.

• 33:56Dan Snow?

  Oh yeah, the rich widows.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm, the merry widows.

• 33:59Dan Snow?

  They've hacked the medieval world, right?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And so they're the ones who are just kind of doing whatever it is they want to do. And there's a lot of hand wringing about what you do about them because there isn't really anything that you can do about them, except like wag your finger.

• 34:10Dan Snow?

  They've paid their dues, they got married.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  They did exactly what you're supposed to do. And a lot of the time, you're sort of not supposed to get married again. And then again, you know, so there's the foil, I mean, she's just a character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but the wife of Bath very famously is like, I just keep getting married because every time a husband dies, I want another one because I love to shag and also I'm very good with money. And so these are all business acquisitions that I'm having. And that tells us a lot about what the worries about women who are wealthy and quite aware of their own sexuality are. But on the other hand too, she's kind of like played as quite sweet and people like her in the end. And yeah, technically she's not supposed to be acting that way, but we all love the wife of Bath, don't we?

• 34:54Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, The Best Is Yet To Come. Stick with us.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:34Dan Snow?

  And because on the military side of things, when I come across women in the medieval world, clearly, you know, they're the property of their husbands, that it's a misogynistic society, they can't all power in their own right. And yet, you often find women leading forces during sieges, right? Eleanor Accotaine, you and I are big fans of.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:50Dan Snow?

  We've got that wonderful woman who's in charge at Lincoln in 1217, Delahaye. And women and princesses, they end up, well, running estates for husbands who are away. They end up fighting. So that's an interesting thing.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is very much seen that women can do these things. So women end up on campaign all the time. You know, we have this kind of amorphous term of camp followers, right? And that's That's usually like your wife, right? Because if you're getting sent off somewhere, it's like, well, who's doing all the cooking around here? These are not professional armies. There are no cooks. There's no one to do the washing up. So women sort of come along with that. And a lot of the time, that means that they also are doing military things. But we just kind of don't talk about it. And certainly, as you say, you know, the Paston letters, so the very important English family, the Pastons, we have all these letters back and forth to different people. And we have the women saying, I need this many pole axes. I need this many arrows. I need this many crossbow bolts because we're trying to shore things up around here.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  So these are women who are very much trusted to run estates, to lay siege, to be involved in armies. But there's also a little bit of a worry about camp followers with armies. So for example, Joan of Arc, another person that we're both big fans of, she ends up running off a bunch of camp followers from the French armies during the Hundred Years' War, because sometimes camp followers are just good old fashioned sex workers. Because these girls know a deal when they see you. You know, and there's a rather a lot of dudes around here and they're not all married. Or their wife isn't with them, so they know how to make some money. And there's some hilarious illustrations of Joan of Arc being like, get out of here, girls. And these very nicely dressed girls being like, oh, and running off, which I find very amazing.

• 38:27Dan Snow?

  What a killjoy.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I know. I'm like, boo, Joan.

• 38:30Dan Snow?

  Okay, so there are widows of merchants and craftsmen, artisans, of nobles. They could exercise power in their own right. So the medieval world was not, we might think, just male dominated women just hidden inside property, not playing any part.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would say that medieval women play huge roles in society in ways that women don't. Again, you know, in the Victorian period or in the early modern period. That's when we start to see the kind of retreat of women from public and into the domestic sphere. So in the medieval world, yeah, we're not always going to necessarily know about women. But it's because it's so common for women to be everywhere that everyone doesn't bother to write it down. It's like, they assume you know that there's a woman on campaign with this army. So like, what would be the point of talking about it?

• 39:14Dan Snow?

  Listen, there's a whole, the internet was out there with the spread bit on when you blame bad things on the early modern period. And I think we did hit it.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Listen.

• 39:22Dan Snow?

  Let us know, everybody.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Okay, wow.

• 39:23Dan Snow?

  Let us know, everyone, what the winnings are. Okay, so what about queerness? Like, you talked about sodomy. So that's just people having sex not for procreation. Are people talked about as we might now call trans or like gay? Like, is that something it's talked about?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, so we know there's a very famous case of what we would now sort of call a trans woman from here in London. Her name was Eleanor Reigner. And Eleanor, we find out about because she's doing sex work in the wrong place. So she's doing sex work kind of over by the Tower of London. And that is not one of the approved red light areas. You're supposed to be in Southwark or over on Cock Lane or on Grob Cunt Lane. You know, just look.

• 40:02Dan Snow?

  That's which is true, but those are actual.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Those are actual true names. Cock Lane's still there.

• 40:06Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  So that's fun. It's in Falstaff, which is cute. But Eleanor gets found shagging a dude in the wrong place and she gets brought before the court. And the court's like, girl, what's all this? You know, and she's like, well, here's the tea. I transitioned at this inn in Oxford, full of trans girls. And, you know, they're the ones who taught me how to dress. And this is how I live my life. And these are the ways that we make ourselves become more feminine. She tells the story that she's.

• 40:34Dan Snow?

  And that's all in the court proceedings?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 40:35Dan Snow?

  What a treasure trove.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  And it's absolutely amazing document. And what we can see from it is that she's what we would now call like bi or pan. We're like, she shags women, she shags men, she shags for money, she shags for fun. She does technically, well, more feminine jobs like embroidery, but she also kind of shags around on the side or does some light theft here and there, you know, anything to kind of get by. And we don't really find out what happens to her, but they're mostly like, you're crazy. That's crazy. And we think they just kind of like let her go because they think it's kind of entertaining.

• 41:06Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  So we certainly know that these people are around. And then the other side of this coin is we find lots of what we would now consider to be trans men in monasteries.

• 41:15Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  So it'll be, oh, it turns out Brother John doesn't have the equipment that we expected that he had. They love that. They're like, this is brilliant. This is like overcoming your femininity in the name of God. This is devoting yourself to Christ. It's better to be like a man. So if you're behaving like a man, that's like brilliant. So they love that stuff.

• 41:33Dan Snow?

  So fair play to the girls.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 41:34Dan Snow?

  Oh, interesting. We touched on it a little bit earlier, but the dangers of medieval sex. Well, again, this could be a little bit early on, but like sexually transmitted disease and infection. I mean.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  It does exist, so we don't have syphilis yet.

• 41:48Dan Snow?

  No, that's remind me the period that comes in.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Early modern, when everything was bad. No, but we definitely do know that there are some things that are kind of around the shop. Interestingly, they tend to think of leprosy as possibly an STI, which it is not. But we do think that people had things that were kind of like, you know, chlamydia now, stuff like that. And there are some interesting ideas, right? So for example, people will say of sex workers, well, sex workers are unable to get pregnant because they don't really like sex, you know, they're doing it for a job. But we also think that maybe sex workers do have a harder time getting pregnant because they might have got STIs.

• 42:20Dan Snow?

  Interesting.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  That would make that more difficult. Of course, though, it's not impossible and obviously sex workers did have kids. But there are certainly things out there that you can get, but it's not of the virulence of syphilis, which really messes everybody up when it comes in because no one had ever seen anything like it.

• 42:37Dan Snow?

  Yeah, hideous. And unwanted pregnancy, we talked about the cycle. We talked about aphrodisiacs, were there things that people could do to try and prevent unwanted pregnancies?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  So the major thing that they use are abort efficients. And very interestingly, the medieval church is pretty chill about abortion. They're kind of like, babe, up until the first trimester, it's a freebie. It's that's just whatever. And so the big thing that we tend to see, both recommended by midwives and also in herbariums and places like that is drink pennyroyal tea. Just get some pennyroyal down you, which works, we definitely know it works.

• 43:12Dan Snow?

  And what's pennyroyal?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  So pennyroyal is a little herb, tastes kind of nasty, I would imagine, but it's very easy to grow and it's kind of all around the shop. And you can just take that, brew it into tea, drink that. And if you drink enough of it, it can induce a miscarriage.

• 43:25Dan Snow?

  As soon as you feel in the first trimester.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you notice that you've missed a period, you can start chugging that down. And that is kind of like a get out of jail free card, the church is okay with it. But they're particularly okay with it because the other option a lot of the time, especially for people who are living in poverty, is infanticide. And the downer side is that infanticide is really, really common in the medieval period. And so the church just does not want that to happen. So they're like, fine, first trimester, just say 10 hail Marys and like, probably try not to shag if you.

• 43:54Dan Snow?

  Of course, of course.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  But.

• 43:55Dan Snow?

  But if something happens.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  And again, do you want to guess when they start cracking down on abortion?

• 44:01Dan Snow?

  Let me think.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Give you one. I'll give you one.

• 44:02Dan Snow?

  Yeah. Is it the early modern period when they start?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  It was.

• 44:06Dan Snow?

  Interesting. Okay, interesting. Okay, so even when you were a high status woman and your husband was super touchy about inheritance and lands and dynasties, you could have sex outside that marriage and be reasonably confident that you were going to bear the right man's children?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know what you're doing in terms of using varying herbs, but also a lot of the time, if you are that high status, you are just going to limit yourself to sodomy. That's one of the big things. So you're just like, hey, you know, hand stuff, that's fine. And indeed, the Romandola Rose, which I talked about earlier, The Romance of the Rose, one of the big courtly love books from the time, it can also be read as a metaphor for going down on chicks.

• 44:49Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Romancing the rose.

• 44:51Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Which is, you know, fine, and no one's going to get pregnant from that.

• 44:54Dan Snow?

  No.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Plus, it's got the bonus point of being very, very sexy because the church told you not to.

• 45:00Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  And they love to do whatever the church tells them not to do. Like, they simply long for a handjob. It's great.

• 45:06Dan Snow?

  What a different world. Okay, so, and then I guess finally, obviously, sex can lead to childbirth, and we should just check in with that. Is that as dangerous as people say?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 45:14Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it's not as though medical professionals don't do everything that they can do at the time. But really, up until the 20th century, childbirth is just absolutely a killing field.

• 45:26Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  It's something that we don't talk about now because we want more babies in the world and that sort of thing, and we're not trying to freak women out. But it is very, very dangerous, and it is the number one cause of death for women in the medieval period. If you make it through the early years, so one or two, the thing that's going to get you usually is childbirth. But if you make it through that, then you might live a long and happy life, and you die in your 70s or 80s.

• 45:49Dan Snow?

  Well, we've got to finish up, obviously, on eternal life. Got to worry about the soul here. The church would tell you that if you do lots of the things that you've talked about today, you are in trouble. You're not going to get into heaven.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And there is a real worry about that. It's not to say that people didn't worry about their souls when they were doing all these things that the church told them not to do, but they are hoping for what we call in the medieval period, the good death, right? Which is that you die after you've confessed your sins and you go to the priest and you're like, "Sorry, I was shagging a whole lot when I was younger." And they go, "Oh, yeah, no worries. You're fine." You get extreme unction and then you die and, you know, fantastic, you will probably go to heaven. Now, where most people expect they're going to end up if they're somewhat sinful is actually purgatory. Purgatory isn't a place in between heaven and hell. It's hell with a timer. And so we know rather a lot about what lustful people will end up experiencing in purgatory from stuff like hell frescoes in churches.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  And so there's rather a lot of kind of like sexy naked people getting spanked by a demon.

• 46:49Dan Snow?

  Sounds terrible.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  I mean, you will see, you know, in what is a very ha ha funny, they think, idea of sodomy, you'll see a lot of dudes getting spit roasted. You see, you know, so you'll get things like that happening. Now, most of them are going to get out eventually.

• 47:06Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  The church kind of wants people to be sitting a little bit because you know how you get your relatives out of hell for shagging too much? So masses for the soul. Just, you know, kick the church a little bit of money. They'll pray for your horny aunt.

• 47:19Dan Snow?

  And then-

• 47:20Speaker 02

  And she'll be let out.

• 47:21Dan Snow?

  The horny aunt's allowed out of purgatory a little bit quicker for a little donation.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 47:25Dan Snow?

  Like, follow and subscribe.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. This is what I'm telling all my nieces and nephews. Help!

• 47:32Dan Snow?

  We need to reduce my time in purgatory. It is a tall order.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen.

• 47:37Dan Snow?

  Thank you very much, Eli Aniga. If there is a God, there'll be no purgatory for you because you're a legend. Thank you very much.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Dan, thank you so much for having me on to talk about my favorite thing in the world.

• 47:49Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out.

• 48:20Speaker 01

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• 49:03Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 49:11Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History at and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.